Question: In “Preface to the Wisdom of Kabbalah” Baal HaSulam writes that in our world the receiving desire materializes in its entire, adequate, desired form. What is it desired for?

Answer: For correction. Otherwise why would it need to descend down the ladder of the spiritual worlds? Moreover, on the lowest level it went through life cycles over and over again until taking on the adequate form in our time. Even in our world the development happens “according to schedule,” and now in the 21st century we are starting our ascent back up. Our current state is the desired, adequate form.

This point was instilled in us from the beginning of creation and we had to reach it. Now is exactly the beginning of man’s or creation’s birth. Until now there was no creation. There was just desire, which developed according to a set program in order to reach a specific state where a point of freedom emerges, the point of our independence.

Question: We are talking about a fully formed egoistic desire, but the “desired form” sounds like a positive thing.

Answer: Of course, this is a positive state. That is exactly how the Torah defines the deadly egoistic desire that has accumulated its full might. This is where creation begins because now it can form, express, and sense itself.

As long as a person doesn’t feel that he is evil, completely opposite to the Creator, as long as he doesn’t realize the entire horror of being in this position, he won’t be able to work on himself. Therefore, in the boundaries of the process of correction, this is a good state because it leads to the formation of a human being.

However, if you suppose that “goodness” is when you feel good, fine, go ahead and feel good. But this is purposeless. In a goal-oriented state a person feels his opposition to the Creator, and this is exactly what motivates him to act.From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/24/11, “Preface to the Wisdom of Kabbalah”

Question: In “Preface to the Wisdom of Kabbalah” Baal HaSulam writes that the desire for pleasure, which formed in its final form, is in “this world.” What is “this world?”

Answer: It’s precisely what is written there: the state of the “receiving desire which has formed in its final form.” In reality there are two things in existence: Light and desire. Everything else are just names for these forces.

When the receiving desire undergoes changes, it finally reaches the lowest state called “this world.” This is a spiritual notion, which is why we differentiate between it and “our world,” in which we exist for now on the animate level. Only a person who feels that he is at the last stage, in the final form of the egoistic desire, determines his location as “this world.” This can already be called spiritual attainment in some sense because a person is aware of where he is according to the spiritual coordinates. But a “person from the street” does not live in “this world” yet, but still in his own world.From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/24/11, “Preface to the Wisdom of Kabbalah”

Working in the group is extremely important. Without the group, one can’t advance. Studying theory from the authentic sources is not going to help a person in any way since he or she doesn’t change with it.

One has to put himself in a “laboratory”: work in the group, be influenced by it, time after time lower his head before it, and exalt the group in his eyes so that the friends would have an impact on him. And other times, it should be the other way around: On has to exalt himself by bestowing to the group and seeing the friends as little. This is how the work is done, mutually and in turns, depending on which of the two forces a person is employing at the moment.

My future soul is the “resistance” in the integral spiritual chain, placed between the “plus” and the “minus.” Sometimes, I work in the group by using my positive force and sometimes the negative one. Thus, there are times when I receive additional positive power from the group, and other times I get the negative one. This is how my “resistor” (R) evolves and becomes ever closer to the group, by getting engaged in it until I become its internal part.

Having entered the group, I become like a drop of semen in the womb and start growing in it. If, with all my initial egoism, I am able to cancel myself in the group as its integral part, I am regarded as an “embryo.” Immediately thereafter, my egoistic desire starts growing progressively. Thus I start going through developmental phases having renounced myself before the group.

The initial phase is regarded as “the nine months of conception,” which is the first stage of development. Having completed it, I get born.

Then, the second phase begins: My egoism grows bigger, and I cancel myself before the group ever more. But this time, I do it more proactively—I work in bestowal to others. This period of “infancy,” the small state, is called “two years of nurturing.”

Next, I move on to the third phase of egoistic development and reach “the age of thirteen.”

Beyond this point, I can gradually start employing all of my egoism in order to bestow, until I become a complete human being (Adam) at the age of 20 and on.

I undergo this entire process by using my egoism which evolves alongside my actions shown as the time line (t) in the diagram above.

If the Creator wishes to be the Creator, He needs the creature. This created being, which exists separately from the Creator and feels independent of Him, receives from and responds to the Creator, and it is considered as though it is giving back. In other words, these two have to have a certain relationship, feelings, thoughts, and interaction.

There has to be two! Therefore, it’s necessary to create a being separate of the Creator, meaning that its nature should be the will to receive pleasure—the only thing it lacks to be the creature. That is, it has to feel alive, existing, and receiving. Then, by using this desire to receive, it can become like the giver and respond to the Creator’s love in the right way.

Thus, except for the will to receive pleasure, the creature must also possess a “steering wheel” in order to turn this desire and change its direction from 100% of receiving for its own sake to 100% of receiving for the Creator’s sake. And in the rest of this interval between them, there will be various combinations between these two extremes: one part to the Creator, and the other to me.

This is what defines the entire ladder of spiritual rungs. I start with 100% for myself and gradually turn the “wheel” 180 degrees to 100% of bestowal to the Creator or other people. It doesn’t matter to whom because it’s all about how I use myself.

“I” is my desire, whereas the “steer” is my intention, meaning for the sake of whom I exert. This is what determines my state. And now the only question is at which point of this circle I am. We start at the zero point (0) and finish with the final correction (Gmar Tikkun), the state of absolute love and bestowal.

So, according to the plan of creation “to delight the creatures,” the Creator creates the necessary desire. Additionally, He gives the creature conditions which allow it to control the desire and turn itself in the direction it chooses—if I wish to “drive” to the higher rungs, on the 125 degree ladder, from the zero point of “this world” to the world of Infinity. This is how the plan of creation works.

In order to keep “driving,” I need to see the road ahead of me. I have to know what is necessary to keep driving and how to obtain “fuel.” I should know how to steer the wheel, change direction, and stay out of trouble on this path. I have to clarify for myself all of these criteria and check whether I am following them or not, if I can change and control them.

Then, I will gradually begin to see in all of these “road traffic” conditions that I am losing sight of myself ever more. I can keep driving only if I am willing for the new form to clothe in me all the time, the one that is ever closer and more similar to the Creator. Phase after phase, point after point of this trip, when I have covered another distance and advanced a bit more, I get internally transformed, and the image of the Creator clothes in me ever more. This means that I am “driving” and getting closer to Him.

Consequently, we need to make our desire to enjoy ready for such transformations, to assume such forms of the upper one. This implies the restriction of the will to receive and annulment of one’s egoistic intention, until it starts to obtain the forms of bestowal, the Creator’s forms, getting closer to Him ever more.[43608]From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/17/2011, Talmud Eser Sefirot

Humanity is facing a big problem of social structure. The correctly formed society is a society of equals. Yet, the difficulty lies in the fact that nature made us all different. Therefore, it’s pointless to put us all in the same conditions: an eight hour day, equal wages, and so on. Our natural differences result in a situation where for one person this is too much while for the other, too little. If I am lazy, it’ll be very hard for me to work eight hours a day, but for an energetic doer, it’s not a problem at all.

How then should we measure equality? How do we build a society of equals? People have wanted to do it for a long time, and if an opportunity had presented itself, we would have created a good, firm structure. But we don’t seem to succeed. Nature doesn’t allow us to be equal.

Why then do we initially differ from one another so much, are opposite to each other, and cannot get along? Every one of us has his or her individual tastes, strengths, rules, capacities, inborn characteristics, and approach to life, and this is why we don’t understand one another.

Indeed, we will not be able to establish equality. It seems that an equal society is the answer to wars and problems from which it would save us, but it’s not what nature had planned. Its plan is to bring us to the realization that we will never find equality anywhere, in anything. We will never get a chance to divide something equally between all. If we did it today, tomorrow we would wage a war.

Equal distribution was attempted in Russia, Israel’s Kibbutzim (communities), all of which failed. Nature wishes for us to use all our egoistic power to reform ourselves to match nature itself: total bestowal. Then I won’t care who gets what and how much. My only concern will be to give the most of myself, one hundred percent. It doesn’t mean an “equal and fair” distribution but a distribution without any monitoring.

In this case, everybody gets according to the level of one’s development, as much as they need. And, as result, a person will evolve to the degree where he or she will be receiving only as much as necessary for their existence, while they will use the rest to serve others, without measuring to whom and how much to give.

This is why people do not understand it when we explain to them what Kabbalah says about the future of mankind. It looks too fanatical to them, too utopian. Yet, otherwise, humanity will not survive since any other distribution is unfair. I cannot measure individual efforts of another in order to evaluate how much he or she should earn. Nature will never allow man to reconcile the two forces, positive and negative, in this manner.

Therefore, when we begin to implement this idea, we should disseminate the wisdom of Kabbalah by using a totally different system. For now, we need to unify in the groups that consist of people who have already received the desire and need for it and who understand that there is no out way out since this is what Nature is calling for. These people have two forces: the power of their personal egoism and the Creator’s power, the spark that pushes them toward positive development. When these two forces meet in one person, he or she begins to hear and process what the wisdom of Kabbalah explains.

The process is gradual and fits the internal development of an individual. We undergo the still, vegetative, animate, and human degrees of it, and as we develop, the two forces collide in us with ever growing intensity, while we create resistance between them, a “resistor” device. By putting between these forces our heart and mind, we hold them in opposition: On one hand, we tame our egoistic force, while on the other, we engage the force of bestowal. By employing these two forces together, we work in the environment, and then we feel as if we are a “resistor in a circuit,” a resisting force in the integral system, its developing part.[43691] From the 2nd lesson at the Rome Convention on 5/21/11

Development occurs by virtue of the “electric” force that circulates in the system. When I connect into it with the two forces I have, the egoistic and altruistic ones, its force starts circulating through me as well. In that case, the system is working with me, and I feel the “current” that permeates its entirety; I discover its program and purpose and get engaged in it ever more.

Thus we ascend the spiritual degrees, rising back toward the unified Force. Plus and minus, positive and negative, unify, and we find our eternal life and the final purpose of our existence. This is the program.

This allows us to see the cause of the crisis and its consequences. We understand why we didn’t receive the wisdom of Kabbalah and didn’t discover the group until our egoism had grown to the limits. Only now do we feel, day to day, how everything is changing around. So many things are happening in the world, all of which are devised to reveal the crisis and demonstrate our desperate plight as well as the hopelessness and lack of understanding prevailing in the world. Day by day, at a rapid pace, we’ll be making steps on this path.

Hence, very soon, we will need to show to the world that we understand the plan of creation. Obviously, we do not know all of it since we attain it by climbing the rungs of development. And yet, we do know how to carry it out and how to begin this process. As to the rest, we study it as we go.

Among us, there aren’t individuals who have reached the finish line, which wouldn’t make a difference anyway. Essentially, we learn from Kabbalists who told us about this entire process, the whole human history. Besides, they gave us this information millennia ago, but to this day, their words still keep coming true.

Therefore, we need only to hear what laws to obey in order to quickly become part of the integral system. As soon as I reveal myself as being such part, all the laws start working through me. I begin to understand and experience what is going on in our world. I see right through it, the forces that run through me; I discover what’s causing them as well as the essence of their work.

It is written: “From Your actions we will know You.” The wisdom of Kabblah is a purely practical method that I apply solely on myself. I don’t study any insects under a microscope, nor do I study the external world. On the contrary, I reveal the wisdom of Kabbalah and all creation in general on myself. No science is more practical and experiential than Kabbalah.

Kabbalists explain what laws are to be followed in order for us to become an active part of a greater whole. After all, humanity is merely a small part of the enormous system of the world of Infinity. They talk about simple laws that we need to observe in the group. We must structure it as a mini-model of an integral, immense reality so that within this model we would look for an opportunity and strive to perform according to the ground laws of creation pertaining to our egoism and the positive creative Force.

Then the group will become a “construction area” for me, a sort of “laboratory” where I examine the friends and myself, where we, all together and among ourselves, work, build, create, and shape the future world, the upper world, and humanity of tomorrow. Our acts are in sync with what Kabbalists advise, and we act solely experimentally, by testing and verifying the results of our work.[43710] From the 2nd lesson at the Rome Convention on 5/21/11

A great number of researchers in the world are analyzing the problems of the crisis that we are experiencing in all areas of life and a possibility to overcome it. But the truth of the matter is that although humanity can, albeit with difficulty, identify and comprehend the full scope of the crisis, it is incapable of finding a solution to it.

If you examine the materials on this topic, you’ll see that the proposed solutions are simply naive, and understandably so because the authors of these articles are unaware of the plan of nature, which the wisdom of Kabbalah reveals. In principle, a solution exists at a level other than that of the problems themselves: at the level of the connection between us and revelation of the upper force inside this connection.

With the help of the method of Kabbalah we can attract into our world that very same upper force; we can “extract’” it instead of gold, silver, platinum, diamonds, coal, oil, or gas. We can attract this force (energy, fulfillment) into our world in a pure form, without it being dressed into the earthly energies and materials; we can receive the purest energy that will give us an opportunity to correct ourselves and thereby correct the world.

When we will begin to unite and evoke this force, we will have an inexhaustible source of energy. We will enter another level of existence. Only this can save us. Hence, the crisis is basically at the earthly level; it is an energy crisis. And on the spiritual level, it is the egoistic crisis, which manifests in our world as hatred, fanaticism, or power.

These two types of crises, energy and egoistic, will be increasingly vivid. They will prove to us that there is no way out of them: The absence of energy and the development of egoism lead to war.

The force that will bring us to equality both in energy and relationships between us is called the upper Light. It is a concealed force of nature. But we must reveal it. The entire crisis is intended only for pushing us towards its revelation. And Kabbalah is intended to help us reveal this force.[43628] From the Virtual Lesson, Fundamentals of Kabbalah Series 5/15/2011